geoff pingree

Photo by Jenn Manna

director/producer/editor/writer

Geoff Pingreeis an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, a photographer, a writer, and Professor of Cinema Studies at Oberlin College. He earned both a master’s and doctorate in English and American Literature and Film Studies at the University of Chicago and, before coming to Oberlin, worked in public television in Washington, DC, where he also directed Catholic University’s Program in Media Studies and George Washington University’s Institute for Documentary Filmmaking. His film work has been broadcast on venues including PBS and Discovery. His photography received National Geographic’s 2008 World in Focus Grand Prize and has been published widely in magazines and newspapers including National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He co-edited New Media, 1740-1914 (MIT), a collection of scholarly essays, has authored scholarly articles on documentary and Spanish cinema, has written about media, culture, and politics for the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, the Nation, the Economist, the American Prospect, Ms. Magazine, Cineaste, and National Geographic Traveler, among others, and has worked as a correspondent in Spain for both TIME and the Christian Science Monitor. With colleague Rian Brown, he founded and directs the Apollo Outreach Initiative, a media education and community outreach program housed in Oberlin’s historic Apollo Theatre. He also directs StoryLens (storylens.org), a non-profit organization that produces short independent documentary films about pressing social issues in order to promote education, encourage public dialogue, and facilitate political change. He is currently editing The Return of Elder Pingree, a feature-length autobiographical documentary he shot in Guatemala. With Brown, he created BLUE DESERT ~ Towards Antarctica, a multi-channel video installation shot during a three-week expedition to Antarctica. With grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Initiative, he and Brown are currently completing The Foreigner’s Home, a feature-length documentary on the intellectual and artistic vision of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. The film, which will be released in summer 2017, explores the ideas that Morrison articulated – and the public conversation she began – in an exhibition she guest-curated at the Louvre in 2006. www.storylens.org